Expectations for the Celtics are sky-high this season — and the hype isn’t confined to the Boston area, that’s for sure.
John Hollinger, a former NBA executive-turned-analyst, added to the preseason praise Thursday in a piece published on The Athletic.
Hollinger made several “bold predictions” for the 2023-24 NBA season, and three, in particular, focused on the Celtics, a team with championship aspirations.
Hollinger first predicted Jayson Tatum will beat Nikola Jokić for NBA MVP.
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“(Tatum) nearly led the league in minutes a year ago and is young enough at 25 to again take on a big playing time load,” Hollinger wrote. “Additionally, Boston could easily end up with the best record in the league and may do so by several games. As the team’s best player, Tatum almost automatically becomes a leading candidate.”
Bold? Maybe, seeing as Jokić is the overwhelming favorite after leading the Denver Nuggets to the NBA title last season. But it’s definitely within reason as Tatum enters his seventh year in the league. The Celtics star just keeps getting better.
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Hollinger, an analytics guru whose wealth of NBA experience included seven seasons as the Memphis Grizzlies’ vice president of basketball operations, then took things a step further by predicting Boston will edge the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference.
“The thing about Milwaukee getting (Damian) Lillard is that it also allowed the Celtics to turn Malcolm Brogdon into Jrue Holiday,” Hollinger wrote. “Holiday, of course, is about the best antidote to Lillard that mankind has come up with so far, dating to the 2018 series with the New Orleans Pelicans when Holiday harassed Lillard into 35 percent shooting in a four-game sweep.”
the Celtics will beat the Phoenix Suns in the 2024 NBA Finals.
“Again, the (Kristaps) Porziņģis acquisition potentially looms large, especially if he can hold up on defense, because it allows the Celtics to punish some of the switching schemes that so badly stagnated them in previous postseasons,” Hollinger wrote as part of his explanation. “At the other end, Boston is also one of the few teams with enough elite perimeter defenders to not sweat matching up against (Bradley) Beal, (Devin) Booker and (Kevin) Durant at the same time. In the end, the Celtics’ defense is good enough that I worry less about the offense.”
It certainly feels like championship or bust for the Celtics, whose title window is wide open and should remain so for the next few years.
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